Opinion: What special election?

James P. PinkertonNewsday

Published Monday, June 25, 2001

Maybe I just have a suspicious mind, but I think that if the special election Tuesday had gone the other way -- if the Democrat had won instead of the Republican -- it would have gotten more attention.

What special election?

The one in the rural Tidewater area of Virginia, in which Republicans won a House seat the Democrats had held since 1982.

That is, the one that reporters covered breathlessly -- until the results came in.

Certainly, a lot of attention was paid to the contest before the outcome was known.

The headline in Saturday's Washington Post, for example, read: ''Tight Race Is Closely Watched In Virginia; House Seat at Stake In Special Election.'' Other outlets, too, thought the race was important; the Associated Press headline on Tuesday noted, ''Special election generating national interest,'' and the header in The Hill newspaper, which covers Congress, declared, looking ahead, ''Pols see Virginia race as preview of battle for the House in 2002.''

Of course, with the House so closely divided -- before Tuesday the GOP had a mere six-seat majority -- every election is critical for control of the lower chamber. In addition, the Democrat, Louise Lucas, is a black woman, embodying an up-from-nothing life story that reporters found inspiring -- ''scrappy,'' the Los Angeles Times called her -- while the Republican, Randy Forbes, was just another boring white man.

Yet, as the election results came in for Forbes, journalistic interest faded. Although the AP put Forbes' victory on the wire at 9:24 Tuesday night, the Washington Post's ''On Politics Daily Report,'' which was e-mailed out to subscribers at 11:03 p.m., didn't mention the results, even though it did find room for such hot political stories as ''Bush Urged to Abolish Nuclear War Plan.'' CNN/Headline News couldn't find time for the story, although it did run the results in a tiny chyron that crawled across the bottom of the screen. CNN's Web site didn't get around to posting the news till Wednesday morning; even the politics subpage on CNN didn't bother with the news till the next morning, insisting, evidently, that ''Senate Republicans slow patients' rights bill'' was bigger political news.

But was this special election really -- despite the pre-election hype -- so special?

After all, a Republican won in a Southern state. Is that big news?

It should have been, and here's why: Virginia may be solidly Republican, but the Fourth District is not. Not only had the Democrats won the seat in the previous 10 House elections, but Bill Clinton carried the constituency in both 1992 and 1996.

George W. Bush carried it by a smidgen last year, but the Democrats' Senate candidate won the Fourth at the same time, even as he was losing the state overall.

Moreover, the general rule of all congressional elections in non-presidential election years is that they go against the party in the White House. That is, in all mid-term elections, including special elections, supporters of the presidential party are usually somewhat complacent, and partisans for the ''out'' party are all fired up.

That's why the presidential party typically hemorrhages House seats all during a president's term. During the dozen years of Republicans Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the GOP ranks in the House shrank by a net of 16. Under the eight years of Democrat Clinton, his party's nationwide numbers fell by 47.

So a win by the ''in'' team -- in this case, the GOP -- is inherently more newsworthy than a win by the ''out'' team.

Indeed, as Carl Forti of the National Republican Congressional Committee noted in an interview late Tuesday, ''Before tonight, since 1977, there've been 78 special elections. And of those elections, 17 involved a switch in party control -- but only three were won by the president's party.''

Or, to put it another way, of all those special elections, the White House party is the distinct underdog, being on the seat-winning side in just three races.

But now make that four, because Bush's Republicans just captured a seat the Democrats had held for two decades.

And that just didn't garner much attention; the Los Angeles Times, for example, which ran a 948-word story on the election Sunday, ran a 91-word story on the election results on Wednesday.

I think the coverage would've been different if the results had been different, but then maybe I have a suspicious mind.